Fotografia a Catalunya
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Pérez de Rozas

1893-1954
Pérez de Rozas

Biography

Photo: Joan Andreu Puig Farran, Carlos Pérez de Rozas i Manuel Azaña al balneari de Sant Hilari Sacalm. 13/08/1934. Autor: Pérez de Rozas

 

Carlos Pérez de Rozas Masdeu (Madrid, 1893 - Barcelona, 1954) is the founder of a line of graphic reporters that influenced the history of photojournalism in Barcelona for the greater part of the 20th century. After more than 40 years of photojournalism he died while covering the arrival of the ship Semiramis on 2 April 1954. He started working for the daily press in 1912 and his career as a professional photographer was cemented a decade later when he received a commission from Barcelona City Council to document the refurbishment of the hill of Montjuïc during the works there in preparation for the International Exposition of 1929.

 

During the Second Republic, and with the incorporation of his two eldest sons, Pepe Luis and Carlos, the profession of the head of the family became the family business. Regardless of who actually took the photographs, they always carried the Pérez de Rozas stamp. After 1932 the company became involved in the official Crònica Gràfica initiative to create a systematic and continuous photographic archive of public life in the city. This project constituted the embryo of what would later become the Barcelona Photographic Archive.

 

Between 1936 and 1938, they began to work for the CNT-FAI by documenting revolutionary conquests and life behind the front. After the war, paradoxically, this did not prove to be an obstacle for them to continue having a prominent role as photojournalists in the Barcelona of the Franco period.